orange booths in a diner, orange stools along a counter behind, light bright behind it. the image is distorted by VCR static. white text reads:
[032] AN ACT OF KINDNESS. A CALLER SHARES A MEMORY. THE HOST FINDS IT.
listen to the season 2 finale here, or anywhere you find your podcasts. transcript under the cut:
[static, radio tuning]
[Traveling Sales Rep: Don’t touch that dial! We’ll be right back, after these short messages.] [static, radio tuning]
[click]
Hello and welcome to Thin Places Radio. I’m your host,
and it is the middle of the night. But don’t worry. You’re not alone.
[Thin Places theme] [cutlery clinking, low diner sounds]
I’m coming to you, I don’t know, from my studio. I don’t know how to feel. I’m at a diner. I went back and back and back. I let the road take me here. My memory doesn’t go this far back, but - I think this is what I’ve been looking for. I think it’s the last thing that I almost-remember. I wish I had something like my name, instead. But I guess this’ll have to do.
It looks really ordinary. ROADSIDE DINER, it says in neon, but both the Es are burned out. It’s painted orange, mirrors lining the inside to make it look bigger than it really is. It looks warm inside. Booths in a U along the edges, a counter in that half-ring in the middle, by the kitchen. A thousand places like this in the continental United States. But nowhere exactly like it. Not really.
So what is Thin Places Radio? Well, you can call in about anything strange that you’ve got going on in your life - feelings, omens, premonitions, hauntings.
Have you been chosen for something you never meant to do?
Have you given a gift to a stranger?
Have you forgotten how you… came to this place?
[sigh] When - When the veil between worlds is thin, we get closer than ever to the strange and the unexplained - but also to each other. Call in, get it off your chest. Lines are open.
[click] [voicemail:]
You can hear me now, can’t you? Oh, you can finally hear me! Good. Good. It takes time for the planes to line up. Sometimes they never do, so.
Please don’t worry. I can’t give you your name. You don’t need it anymore. But I can give you a memory. I can give you the night we met.
You came into the Roadside Diner, just off of I-70. You had that look on your face - that driving-all-night look. That running-away look. Not like you were being hunted. Like you didn’t even know what you were running away from.
You sat in that booth by the back window, near the bathrooms - yes, yes, the one your eyes flicked over to just now. Remember? You ordered a coffee. I was at the counter, talking to the server, and I told her I didn’t have enough to pay for my meal. I said it quietly. There was no yelling. You just noticed. You were paying attention to every person in that diner. Even me. You said, I’ve got it, don’t worry. [huffed laugh] An act of kindness for a stranger.
I slid into your booth to thank you, and you said - and I’m not going to get this all right, because memory’s, y’know, tricky - you said, don’t mention it. You said, I’m sure you would have done the same thing for me. So much trust. How could I not honor it?
I asked you if you were alright, and you told me you weren’t sure. You got out of work that day and you got in your car and you just kept driving. You missed your exit. And you just kept driving, all the way into the night. Are you happy? I asked you. No, you told me.
You didn’t know what was missing from your life, but you knew it was missing. What do you want? I asked you. I wanted to give it to you. And this - this I remember, because this was the important part. “I don’t know,” you said. “I’m just so tired of being a person.”
[radio static]
I put my hands over yours, and I nodded. I knew how to fix it. I asked you if you wanted to be something else. I asked you if you wanted to stop worrying. I gave it to you for free. A deal is a deal. A gift is a gift.
Please don’t worry. I don’t know why you keep worrying. It doesn’t matter what came before. I made it so you never had to worry again. Food, clothes, money. Where to sleep, how to live, how to keep your heart from breaking. The road provides. The road will always provide. I freed you from entropy. I freed you from death.
[the radio shrieks and fuzzes]
I thought you’d stop running away. I thought you’d be happy with the way I repaid your kindness. I took your kindness and your curiosity and your interest in every little person and I turned it into something better. You were a person. [The voice changes from the distortion of a phone voicemail to clear speech.] So what? [They are now beside the host.] I made you a legend.
And I know it’s lonely, at first, to be like us. But you’re not the only one.
You’re not alone.
[click]
The host: It’s you.
The entity: Yes.
[click]
[static] [Traveling Sales Rep: visit us at the ROADSIDE diner just off I-70-] [Various Garbled Voices: the - road - provides -] [The entity: the - road - provides -]
Thin Places Radio is a podcast written by Kristen O’Neal and produced by Kaitlin Bruder. The voice of Your Host is Kristen O’Neal. The voice of [STATIC] is Omar Najam.
Editing and sound design are by Kaitlin Bruder, and the music tracks you heard in tonight’s episode are: the Thin Places theme, by Miles Morkri. If you have a question to ask, a story to tell, or a suggestion for the host, give us a call at (717) 382-8093. The lines are always open.
[Thin Places Theme outro]